The planes were successfully attained through what became known as the Wright Proposition. Chennault used his personal contacts and friends to arrange the purchase of planes. He was friends with the Vice President of Curtiss-Wright, Burdette Wright, whom the proposition is named after. This was a proposition made to the British to give up priority on 100 Curtiss P-40 planes to be used by the American Volunteer Group. The British had taken over a French order for airplanes after the fall in France and were set to receive these 100 P-40's being finished off one assembly line. The Curtiss-Wright company had 6 assembly lines working to fulfill the British order of P-40's. Burdette Wright proposed that in exchange for letting the American Volunteer group and Chennault have priority on the 100 P-40's, Curtiss would build a seventh assembly line to build the British a later, and more advanced model P-40. The British were more than happy to forego their priority and accept a better plane.
As mentioned earlier, the military was strongly opposed to an American Volunteer Group and did not want to lose pilots in this increasingly hostile time in history. It took an Executive Order from the President to pry the pilots out of our armed forces and into the American Volunteer Group. On April 15, 1941 and unpublished Executive Order was sent out by President Roosevelt allowing any enlisted men or reserve officers of the US Air Corps or Marine and Navy air services to resign and join Chennault's newly formed group.
This new group was funded by the US government and had a support group in Washington called China Defense Supplies. Under the "cash and carry" stipulation of the 1939 Neutrality Act, China was allowed to make purchases of goods needed for the American Volunteer Group.
It had been planned to eventually adopt the Flying Tigers into the United States Army Air Force. Chennault was opposed to this idea as he felt that he would lose control and the group would lose its effectiveness as part of the US armed forces. However, the Flying Tigers were adopted into the 14th Air Force commanded by Chennault. The Tigers were replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group, of which only five members of the Flying Tigers stayed on with.
